provinces in germany are given exclusive authority over language, over religion, over education, over environment, you know, fill in the blank. now, again, this is something that we could debate about at great length, but i assume that if you like federalism defined as some degree of subnational autonomy where people can make decisions rell thetively free -- relatively free of national override, then our constitution does a dreadful job in protecting local autonomy. you might, on the other hand, believe in some areas we have too much local autonomy as a political matter and would want to address that in a constitution. you mentioned cities that are very interesting. texas is six times as large as the entire united states population in 1790. we in austin especially are familiar with the tyranny of a centralized government in austin itself called the state government that often seems determined to deprive the city of austin of autonomy over matters that we hold near and dear. so i think that to the extent that federalism does stand for a principle of decision making at subnational levels and allowi